


Ebony and Gale

by fewlmewn (Shouriko)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Altered Mental States, Amnesia, Anal Sex, Blood Loss, Blood Magic, Blood and Injury, Bloodplay, Cannibalism, Daedra, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Knifeplay, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Original Male Follower, Violence, autassassinophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:43:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3502154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shouriko/pseuds/fewlmewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like wind, their bond is fleeting, it could vanish at the first sign of defeat, as soon as the forces of nature demand their toll.<br/>Like ebony, their bond is unbreakable and unknown, dark as the realm where its origin lays.</p><p>Gael, a Breton mage tells the story of his relationship with Hjolfr, the Dragonborn, the one man that could save all of Tamriel. But what Tamriel doesn't know, is who the man behind the myth truly is. Gael has this privilege, but the two have shared more than a tent, an inn or a house. Gael and Hjolfr have shared something deeper, darker and way more dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blade

He talked me into it. I still can't place how it happened. Maybe I was in front of Warmaiden's, staring as if enraptured at the flickering and splintering of steel against the grindstone, or perhaps I was somewhere completely different, looking up to the Gildergreen's rosy foliage, shy red rays peeking through the parting clouds, rain still dripping on my forehead, leftovers of the storm that was moving with the wind towards Riverwood, or being ripped to shreds further away, by the Throat of the World's intimidating peaks. Or maybe I'm more wrong than I imagine. Maybe we weren't in Whiterun at all, it's all so fogged and confused, almost as if the storm, the blinding midday rain with its surreal gleam, the inexplicable sun lighting the water cascading down on us when there should be clouds blanketing the sky, have all been a vision. Maybe there was no rain, no thunderclap echoing in the stone surrounding us and under our feet, maybe I imagined it along with a thousand other details that I would otherwise be able to recount with an historian's zeal if it weren't for the pure and simple fact that deep in the recesses of my mind they feel slimy and fleeting.

The laughter of kids running around, a girl pinching my leg over the robes I wear to ask me if I want to buy some lavender. I know there's lavender free for the taking not five feet away from where we're standing but I smile down at the sweet girl and with a moistened thumb I clean her cheek where it's lined with dirt. I tell her it'll help me keep my robes smelling nice next time I'm camping away from the city and that I'll think of her. I drop a pouch of septims into her small hand, covered in more blisters and calluses than a girl her age ought to have and I feel sorry for her. In this dreamlike reality the irrelevant weight of my clothes and of the posy in my hand don't matter any, but I force my mind to imagine the weight and the way the leather pouch stretches to be far greater than that of a purse with barely five pieces of gold inside.

In my head I am able to reshape this distortion until it suits me, I've always been good with alteration spells. And it's then that I realize I'm dreaming. Or, better yet, my mind is supplying me with something I would otherwise be lacking. The timing and setting of that moment, when Hjolfr convinced me. It seems as if every single instance we've been talking to each other about matters beyond what's strictly business falls into a special realm, divided from what is discernible by the waking intellect.

I asked him what was of his parents once, telling him about my family back in High Rock. And while I remember of every single line of speech I offered him, I can't recall anything of what he must've answered me. He must have because I remember the feeling of satisfaction at his answers, I remember nodding my head in agreement and asking for an explanation as he told me something out of the ordinary. But what was it?

 

But while we do things like these, I realize that it doesn't matter how he convinced me, or when, or why he set his eyes on me when there were so many others more capable than I. It doesn’t matter that my mind is playing tricks on me, that perhaps I am unwilling in these endeavors. Because I seek what he's offering me.

He must have chosen me out of a dozen others willing to kneel and bend for him because I am the most pliant, even in my decisiveness. Perhaps it was a challenge, or a wager he was eager to win. Win me over, convince me. We must've overcome that obstacle somehow in one of those many conversations I can't recall nor place, because here I am. Or am I? Maybe he did not manage to convince me at all, I fear what that must entail. All I know is that Hjolfr is not one to back down from a challenge.

We were barely escaped from Helgen, I was worried sick about what was about to happen, we had saved our hide but only just so, and the metaphorical veal was all but unharmed, my tattered tunic singed, and my right calf still bears the marks the licks of fire caused me, but that man that I had just met days earlier bolstered my resolve with a couple of well-placed words and a good deal to get me hand me down robes, ruined and smelling of dead troll at best. But I was too weak to hold up under a set of Imperial leathers, I was never one to follow a warrior's path, especially not when my skin had melted under a dragon's fiery offense, so that got me going until we reached an inn.

Then it happened for the first time, I saw who Hjolfr really was. The quiet, calm and collected rebel the Imperials had captured, who had kept his mouth shut for three days straight to the point of convincing us all of being a spy for Ulfric in person while I spent those which I believed to be my last hours on Nirn talking and blabbering about my life, turned out to be a vicious mercenary, who wouldn't have stopped in front of anything. And when something had the misfortune of putting a stop to his progress, he would've eliminated the obstacle in its entirety.

 

That happened in who knows which tavern in whatever Hold it might've been.

No weapons, no spells, the man had said. He was bulky, burly and as vicious as Hjolfr, a rare sight indeed. And of course he had accepted the brawl without flinching, without thinking of the consequences. My better judgment told me to disregard righteousness and cast at least a Oakflesh over his simple leathers, enough to give him some defense against the opponent's heavy armor but not enough to receive a beating from him for disgracing his honor with a very noticeable and forbidden Ironflesh, which would've have most definitely counted as cheating.

Fists started flying and in his lack of grace Hjolfr sent me back against a wooden barrel with his first swing. Swing that landed on the other man's pauldron. Hjolfr had both clenched hands lined with blood as the result of hurried and misplaced punches, while the opponent's blows landed on his jaw and square at the center of his chest, literally beating the air out of his lungs.

I collected myself and cast a Stoneflesh, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, engulfed in what little shadow the inn's internal framework granted me from the hearth's dancing flames. It proved to be useless when the other man's blows targeted Hjolfr's face with a frenzied resolve to utterly disfigure him. I started to panic, all around me the patrons’ cheers begun to die down, the squelch of blood and Hjolfr being beaten to a pulp almost deafening in my ears. Among the ringing inside my head, I was sane enough to catch Hjolfr nodding in my general direction and quickly start casting brief and almost unnoticeable bursts of paralysis that lasted enough to delay the other man's judgment with distances and time frames, allowing Hjolfr windows for a few well-placed punches. Of course my companion's brutality had only increased with the number of blows received, in so that those little hits he managed to push through were enough to disorient and send the opponent to the ground. The brawl was won, for a despicable 200 septims we did need but would've been easier to collect by selling the junk I had been hauling in my backpack ever since the last Nord barrow.

And since a chair had been broken during the fight, I very diplomatically traded the cost for its repair with our leave instead. The innkeeper looked positively relieved to have only one brutal mercenary to host for the night instead both of the two who had just clawed each other's faces off on top of it all, so we left and camped with our tent just out of town, beside a farm.

I pitched the tent and threw a pair of furs over the leather against the rising gust of cold night air and shucked inside. I was just about to take out of my pack a salve to soothe Hjolfr's wounds when he turned on me, backhanding me down to my knees on the bedroll. Tears started collecting at the corners of my eyes, adding to the powerful stung on my cheek. I was confused and offended. I had mistaken his nod for a permission to aid him in combat and in so doing I had disgraced him, or perhaps I hadn't mistaken it at all, but if I hadn't done what I did I would've been punished for endangering him with my lack of help. While he looked down on me and offered his hand I realized two things. The first was that there was so much more to him than had met the eye back at Helgen, the second thing was that Hjolfr always got what he wanted, be it winning a brawl, robbing corpses of their meagre possessions, taking a lass up his room at the inn while I'm awake in the bed beside his, or be it beating his faithful companion on a whim. I remember clear as day his bloodied knuckles sliding under my palm as I accepted that hand. That was the beginning. Had I never accepted that gesture, if he had granted such a thing to me, I could've walked off out of it, away from that tent, that damned city, I could've waltzed and hiked all the way across Skyrim and finally joined the College as was my intention all along. But I had to be caught in the middle of a Stormcloak uprising near Dawnstar, sent to Helgen to be executed with the others to prove a point. And when the guards finally understood from my lack of daggers, swords and the like, my ragged robes and filthy cowl that I was no rebel warrior, no enemy of the Empire, they simply couldn't lose face by releasing a citizen, mistaken for a Stormcloak during one of his unassuming walks to collect snowberry, mercilessly thrown in the filth of an Imperial convoy without proof of his supposed belonging to whichever rebellion. They had to pretend I was caught for a reason. I was to be executed. And from that point on, a series of events led me to what I found myself in a few months later. A choice between taking the hand Hjolfr offered me and refusing it, risking an untimely death far more likely than a chance at being left alone for good to go back to my previous life. I don't know what pushed me to take that hand and thinking back to it now I fear it might've been another of those instances in which an unknown force pushed me into acting against my better judgment, but I accepted that gesture.

And as soon as I got back on my feet under the short roofing the tent provided, my face stinging with insult and injury alike, Hjolfr hunched over me, crossing the few inches of height that separated us, and captured me in a bruising kiss. Behind that kiss were hunger, and the repressed rage that couldn't be exhausted with the few punches he had scored with the stranger at the inn, and further away beneath all that force and fierceness was also something else. The desire for forgiveness I would later only find in similar approaches.

A different person greeted me inside our tent, or inside the inns when it was just the two of us. No less savage and bloodthirsty, just in a different way. Those were fleeting moments of clarity during which I believed that taking that hand had done me good, at least to some extent, that I wouldn't feel as strong, as powerful, as wanted had I not been near Dawnstar picking berries, had I been tucked away between spell tomes in a forgotten prison of stone perched on an icy point overlooking a deathly sea of nothingness. Chances are, if I look at them from here where I lay down on my bedroll, spread and accepting and wanting, that I would've died of old age, utterly unassuming of the happenings outside of Winterhold, bored and content with leading an uneventful life, learning spell after spell without a chance at putting them to good use.

But the blood, the death, the passion, the rage, that stung of ice and fire, the numbness in my toes that the heart's pulsing can't possibly reach, they feel better than anything I've ever felt before.

Maybe I'm as twisted as Hjolfr for accepting what he does, what we do, without backing down and running as far as possible. It's just a different kind of perversion that pushes him into doing what he does and me into accepting it.

 

And still, as much as I talk myself into thinking that I wanted this, that I am not unwilling, that Hjolfr has done terrible things to others, and to me as well, but never he went as far as to corrupt my will, there's no helping this feeling of wrongness I get when we fall deeper into the realm of lust and loss of ourselves.

This feeling that, no matter how much I would gladly accept anything he wishes to do to me, anything he demands to have of me, some things must just have been forced on me, for there is no way I would ever accept them otherwise.

But perhaps that's just what I convinced myself of to save my sanity from the awareness of how much I seek the danger, the risk behind what we do.

I would go mad if I were to admit that in my heart and my head I want this with a force I never applied in anything else. More than becoming a strong spell caster, more than making my family proud and finally reach the level I set for myself long ago and worked hard towards achieving, more than all of those honorable things, I want to lose myself in the most basic instincts Hjolfr rips out of me.

I can't place the exact moment when he convinced me, it's all blurry, and maybe it started with that offering of peace and something more after the bloodied brawl, or maybe it was built up from then on until this very moment. I am afraid of him in a unique way that differs from what others must fear of Hjolfr when they are faced with his rage, but most of all I am scared of myself. What part of me seeks a dangerous life, values it more greatly than a safe haven, even?

I do not know, but when he pierces another forsworn with his sword, cutting him open with a bright horizontal line that makes his guts slosh around as he collapses until they fall out, reaching the ground before his corpse does, I feel the pang of pain, the wetness of blood on the forsworn's fur armor, on his desperate hands clutching at his intestines as if it were my own blood dripping down my legs. I see the way Hjolfr smiles back at me with a bloodied face and a briar heart in his clenched fist, and only half of that ominous grin means "I am victorious". The other half, the dark, hidden, deathly half of that smile he offers me along with the briar heart he knows would be put to good use as soon as I find an alchemy table, says something completely different. "This could be you".

And sometimes I do feel as if it's my own heart he's clutching between his hands, the leash he uses to drive me around only one I created for myself, as an excuse to live with the fact that I would follow this madman of my own volition anyway.

 

"You do know I could slice your neck open, don't you?" I feel the cold edge of the blade caressing me, my skin burns where the blood is prickling along the scratch that lines my throat already under the sharp ebony that glistens with the reflection of the hearth behind. I try to breathe as shallowly as I can, what little oxygen reaching my brain not nearly enough to make me ponder the danger I've put myself into with the necessary clarity. My head is fogged, I don't remember drinking more than a couple tankards of watered-down ale, so the strain is what must be blamed for my current state.

Hjolfr offers me a kind smile, out of place but so very welcome, and I ease into his bruising grip, my hip like a rag under his free hand. I could be cast away from his lap as well as fall deeper down, until I'm completely devoured inside of him. His other hand is still wielding the Ebony blade, unflinching, not moving from where it sits just above my pulse that's boiling inside my veins, but not sinking in either. I stopped breathing long ago, and a little while after I did that my legs stilled, catching up with the message my brain must've sent the rest of my body that moving might've gotten me killed. He's still buried to the hilt deep inside me, I feel his girth, the pressure that lines my walls, and he must feel my heat, the vice my panicked clenching creates all around him.

Hjolfr sat back, as always, letting me do all the work, and for Mara knows what reason, when he collected the blade from where it had been discarded on the ground beside his chair, instead of fleeing from his embrace, I melted into it, moaning at the sight of the sword in his hand.

"I asked you if you know that I could kill you right now. Do you?" He asks again, bothered at my lack of lucidity.

I nod, half lidded and with parted lips. It's too much and not enough.

"I could slice you open, kiss you while you choke on your blood. You'd taste so good, warm and rich. And I'd soak the blade in it, watch it gain more power the more life abandons your corpse. And you'd be still rock hard and spearing yourself on my cock while you're dying. I bet you'd like that, the last thing you feel before leaving this miserable life will be my cum filling you up as your body gives out around me."

The conflicting sensations battle inside of my head, I know I should run away as far as I can, but my heart wins in the end. I lean in against the sharp ebony, I feel a thin trickle of blood dripping down my throat, lining the middle of my chest, down to my erection, that is indeed hard and jutting wildly away from my body and against Hjolfr's clothed abdomen. Just a little more pressure and this fantasy could become a dreadful reality, just a little push and the warmth would fill me inside and cover me wholly.

The rivulet of blood is flowing steadily and I continue clenching rhythmically around Hjolfr's shaft that is still buried inside of me. Nothing changes for a few seconds that feel like ages, the only thing I notice in this bliss is how he's moving the blade away from my neck, and I chase after it until he speaks again, his voice deep and husky, the lust almost palpable.

"You would like that, there's no need to hide it, not with me. I know what you need. Come, now."

And as the truth dawns on me, I obey and the orgasm he rips out of me is so powerful I almost pass out from the force of it. A clear clang of metal resonates somewhere behind my muffled hearing, I am distantly aware of the fact that Hjolfr must've cast the blade away from us and down to the floor.

I'm convulsing in his embrace, I shiver, droplets of cold sweat line my forehead and he latches with his lips onto the cut along my neck, sucking and licking at the blood, smearing the perfect line of red over my chest and his clothes as he gathers me closer in his arms.

I kick my head back to leave him room to savor my blood fully and while I try to regain a grip over my consciousness he moves my lower half around until I'm bouncing lightly over his muscled thighs, his arms clasp around my middle, grasping and scratching my back like I'm not the only one who needs saving, like he needs something to hold onto as well. He comes as he kisses me, my own blood painting his lips crimson, his eyes darkened and full of lust. It will kill us, if we keep this up. Someday things will go very wrong and there'll be no coming back.

This is what we are for each other. And when I come back to my senses I am safe in a sea of blankets and furs, tucked into my bed, the cut below my jaw just a thin, pale line that will heal entirely in a couple more hours. Weren't it for the sweet ache in my backside and sore legs I would probably think that days like these have been completely produced by my own diseased mind.

Usually, Hjolfr is nowhere to be seen, probably down by the cooking pot trying to mask the taste of blood with smoked meat or beef marinated with garlic and mirriam, or watering down the flavor of iron with mead and ale until he passes out by the hearth clutching a bottle of Honningbrew, especially on those nights we are staying at an inn.

He tries to keep his self, after these nights, separated from his mercenary and treasure hunter self. So detached to the point I feel alienated from him, like a tool he uses for his own means. But just as I get to the point of making up my mind and finally leave him for good, the vicious circle starts again.

He seizes me against a wall in a dark alley, or grabs my wrists behind my back on our way out of some shop, or he plays with a dagger leering in my direction, that very hunger I got acquainted with well enough in the past months clear as the light of day. And like a reflex I can't control, my arousal builds up, and I anticipate the moment we'll finally be behind closed doors, fulfilling this need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: If you're wondering why I've decided to publish a fic about two entirely unknown OCs, set during TESV, is because I've played Oblivion (finally!) and the differences between how easy it is to carry out Daedric quests in Skyrim compared to how terrible they appear to be when done in Cyrodiil made me think. What if I wrote something where the influence of Daedra and the consequences of the quests the Dragonborn carries out were way more severe and dangerous? I thought to myself: it just isn't possible that a man who has killed for the Dark Brotherhood, stolen and conned for the Thieves Guild, and committed atrocious crimes against humanity for the Daedra gets to prance around as if nothing happened. What happened to the minds and souls of these people? And if you're wondering, there's more than meets the eye about Hjolfr and Gael.   
> And in this version of TESV, we have a set of Dragonborn and follower who split the tasks among themselves, so that Hjolfr will never do anything related to magic, and won't inconvenience himself with menial Deadric requests - and Gael will keep away from the darker and more dangerous quests and guilds, resorting to gain his share of coin or loot by doing Meridia's bidding, or helping citizens. Of course, I set out to show how acting this way does nothing to make one's sins one's own and for Hjolfr and Gael being together might be more dangerous than anything else.  
> That said, enjoy reading this twisted tale of lust, death and mystery.


	2. Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief glimpse into Gael's story before Helgen and into the invisible bond that keeps him shackled to Hjolfr. Whether he's willing or not, is something yet to be discovered.

For some reason, we've never set foot inside the Winterhold together. Hjolfr left with Lydia for some time after becoming Thane, saying he wanted to give her a test run, see if she could be trusted inside the house. Apparently the best way to test the waters was to bring her along inside some Ancient Nord ruins. Since I couldn't be bothered to stay inside Breezehome's ridiculous alchemy laboratory and the pantry was nearly empty, I took my leave and decided to adventure on my own until their return. I had about two weeks to do as I wanted, go where I liked. I decided to finally travel past the snowy hill outside Dawnstar where I had the misfortune of running into the Stormcloaks to see what Winterhold was like. I had known of its awful and disgraced condition ever since my decision to leave High Rock and venture here, but despite what everyone had told me, I thought it best to put my abilities to the test where they could've made a difference. And starting from a ghost town whose state could do nothing but improve seemed like a good idea. I like the mountains, I like the cold, I don't much care for snow and in all honesty I felt mature and strong enough to make it out here by myself. But clearly I was wrong.

The carriage had to stop more than once on the road to the city because of the unforgiving snow storms raging from both sides of the path. I camped under a jutting rock with the horse, the rider, an old lady who was half frozen to death already and another man, about my age. Our teeth were clattering and there was too much noise for words to be heard inside the stone alcove we managed to find, so when I finally arrived in Wintherhold I stopped for a pint at the tavern with the man I believed to be a miner.

He told me of his mother, who refused to leave her house even as it fell board after board down to the ground and how she needed tending to, too old to take care of herself. He, Kleimneir, had to come up from Kynesgrove every two weeks to stock up her pantry and give her a bath, since she couldn't be bothered to do those things. I sympathetically patted his shoulder and told him he was a good son. I told little about me, but for some reason I was more comfortable telling him of how I left my birthplace to seek an unlikely future between Winterhold's ruins, leaving my own parents behind to chase something that might never be truly found after his story than I would have felt telling him about who I had become after leaving High Rock. When the dreaded question came, "and now? What you doin' to earn some gold?", I simply answered with a dismissive "Work for a treasure hunter. Not in his right mind most of the time but keeps me outta trouble, I watch his back – at the end of the day we both leave a few hundred septims heavier", offered him another cup of mead and threw the lass at the counter 20 septims for a room.

We got drunk together, stopped talking about our lives fairly soon after that and he got me laughing for the first time in a while. He told me about a mercenary getting drunk while passing through Kynesgrove on his way to Windhelm and how the townsfolk convinced him to hunt down butterflies in exchange for a prize. The man accepted and stumbled out of the inn with everyone following behind to see what he would've done, but it was night, couldn't see a damn thing and everybody was bent over with laughter as he chased moths like a horker on a slippery slope until dawn. When he finally came back, his maul strapped on his back, the image of a proper muscle for hire, and two fistfuls of moth wings shining and crumpled, the innkeeper refused to pay because it wasn't butterflies. I spluttered a sip of ale right into Kleimneir's tunic as I laughed and he rose from his chair to take it off. We were into the room I paid for already as that happened, and I was so inebriated I threw all of my common sense to the floor along with my own robes.

Weren't I so far gone, I would have wondered about Hjolfr, and gotten to that point I would've also probably convinced myself that if he kept bringing girls up to his room with me in the other chamber or in the nearby cot, then I had every right to bed the first man that caught my eye. And Kleim was so very pleasant to the eye.

Skin pale with the countless working hours spent underground in some dangerous, collapsing mine, but beneath that was the leftover warmth of the smelter, woven in his tendons. Strong arms, stretching along my body almost as if the movement could've brought him relief after the countless mechanical repetitions with the pickaxe. His warm mouth, closing around my length and lapping at my chest with a precision and zeal I never experienced before drew hot lines that stung my skin as the breeze managing to enter the inn from the cracks in the wood ghosted over me. The way he pressed me against the thin mattress, pushing inside with a slow burn, accompanying me to the edge of pleasure with unhurried, deep plunges, his movements hindered by the alcohol and the desire to get the most out of that chance encounter were exquisite.

He kissed my neck then, and I somehow came to my senses. I felt like something was missing, had I not been that drunk I could've placed that sensation, but I still had the echo of what it must've been. We fell asleep, I managed to wake up with a raging headache as the first light peeked through the frosted windowpanes. I tried to heal myself but it was useless, so I grabbed a flagon of dragon’s tongue tea on my way out to help with the hangover. I didn't leave any notes behind, not a word to the lass cleaning the floors, I didn't even consider waking Kleimneir up to tell him that I didn't feel like keeping this up. I just assumed it counted towards being considered as a one night stand without feelings or the promise for more and left. I wanted to stay for longer, Kleimneir would have most definitely stayed for another night but something was pulling me away from Winterhold. I looked up at the College, a woman stood beside the gate, despite the early hour, and as I caught a glimpse of a glyph on the stone ramp she called out to me. It rang something like "cast a spell here and I'll let you in" with an odd giggle and a gaze that bore into me, as if the elf knew who I was. I smiled, shook my head with an embarrassed smile, thought of Hjolfr and left Winterhold for good.

I never told him of Kleimneir, or about the College, because it would've meant admitting that even in my freedom I was somehow shackled to him with a bond neither of us could explain, comprehend or rend. As far as he and Lydia were concerned, I had remained behind at Breezehome, looking through old spell tomes and books in search for some passage that I might've missed before.

As if he sensed something was off, to keep on the safe side of my disposition, we never ventured towards Winterhold, and pushing ourselves to the Pale only if strictly necessary.

Perhaps he didn't want to give me my freedom, although he couldn't possibly have known that my free will was his already. Or maybe he didn't want to risk the heartache of seeing me choose the College over what he had to offer me. Since I believe Hjolfr to be more invested in his own assets than his sentiments, the former is probably truer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I'll let you in on a secret: there's definitely a hint buried somewhere around here about the story that will unravel, eventually)  
> Oh, and thanks for reading! Comments are appreciated :D


	3. Balance - I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A spell that would best be left forgotten helps Gael see Hjolfr's true nature. But even after being witness to that, the depraved impulses growing inside of the mage don't seem to cease or slow their grasp over his sanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter (but I split it in two) and the tags start to really play a relevant part. Which means you'll see bleeding, injury, graphic depictions of violence, abusive relationships and life-threatening situations in this chapter. If that's you jam, read on, soldier! If not... it's probably better you give this fic a good long thought, because it ain't getting better, so you might want to drop this where you left it. Just warning you.  
> A/N: What can I say, I do enjoy making my OCs suffer. And having a selfless but secretly controlling OC and a sadistic bastard is not helping my addiction.

I don't know much about Hjolfr since, as I said, whenever we come by the subject I somehow cannot focus on his words, if he says anything at all. It seems that the more time I spend with him, the more frequently I happen to experience amnesia and loss of consciousness, or piercing headaches at the very least. Some nights my rest is so troubled I awaken more drained of energy than I was when I first laid down. It might have to do with the foul deeds we manage to put ourselves through more often than not, certainly entering cursed tombs and realms doesn't do wonders for one's well-being, but the fact that in all of this Hjolfr seems utterly unaffected worries me.

I visit the Temple of Kynareth whenever we arrive in Whiterun, to make sure I haven't contracted some disease or to assess my mental condition once again. So far, nothing has been serious enough to have a priestess approach me directly for something other than a few pitiful smiles and the customary blessing. The only aspect of this habit that would be considered worrisome is my belief that something must be wrong with me.

Hjolfr doesn't always rely on my services, despite his roguish nature, penchant for light armor and an even more deeply seated passion for catching any and every wandering blow with his body, and my increasing abilities with Alteration spells. Sometimes he prefers to hire one or two other mercenaries, meek enough to know that he's not one to cross or enrage during their travels, but decisive enough to know what they're doing and in whose direction they're swinging their battle-axes. With the Civil War there's a lack of good soldiers on one side and an inexplicable availability of deserters willing to die for gold on the other. I assume this decision is taken from time to time on a merely logistical standpoint. After the few first times in which I found myself succumbing under the massive weight of my backpack, trying to juggle a staff retrieved from a rotting corpse and a number of expensive breastplates, and being struck for my incompetence in such a simple task, urged to improve my skill as pack horse if I wanted to arrive home in one piece, we all agreed that leaving me behind to my scholarly duties would have been best for all. Hence, the two mercenaries – or artifact carriers, whatever the case.

The blows stung, my pride was shattered, but I learned an important lesson, and I toughened up after that. I'm not robust, I'm not strong. I'm clever, quick-witted, an able healer when it's needed. So whenever I feel my legs giving out under the weight of Hjolfr's latest obsession with Dwemer crafts, I heal myself as imperceptibly as possible. Slowly my magicka gets drained, in the effort to support my body and keep my kneecaps from eroding as I march on. I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer according to Hjolfr, but I know better than to make a show of my ineptitude by wasting precious magicka potions after these instances, once we’re resting at camp or we’ve finally sold the last of the loot, so as soon as I learnt the Equilibrium spell I started resorting to it whenever my depleted magicka reserves started to affect my head with dizziness and general exhaustion.

It was a chance encounter, really, a weirdly familiar hooded figure offered to sell me the tome for what could be considered an incredible bargain. Barely 80 septims, that I luckily had on my person at the time. But for some reason I cannot place where this barter happened or who the seller was. All I remember was the cold, and that the words explaining how the spell worked sounded different inside my head as I learnt how to cast it.

I doubt Hjolfr ever noticed that I was exploiting my magic with that spell during these expeditions, and I'm unsure about the exact moment when he found out I had learned how to cast Equilibrium. But eventually, he found out, and his requests started pushing my limits more and more.

 

There were at least three poisoned arrows seated in his upper left thigh and chest, just shy of major organs and arteries, but the venomous coating of the arrowheads prevented healing even after I had carved out the ebony from his flesh. I had no energy left to heal him, I was just about to dig for a health potion inside my pack when he whispered a "come on, heal me" with the most challenging look I've ever seen. In the heat of the moment I didn't think, and I reacted instinctively, a red globe engulfing my left hand, slowly ripping strings of life from my own being, my brain and fingers flooded with pulsing blue, raw magical energy. Once I had regained my magicka, I quickly focused on casting a restoration spell on the infected wounds. Had I paid more attention I would have noticed Hjolfr's knowing grin – he had lain me a trap, probably to confirm his suspicion that I had a new trick up my sleeve.

After that it was little, mischievous things. He dabbled with daggers on a daily basis, it was his weapon of choice, and after I had proven resourceful even in dire conditions, he exploited my restoration skills, cutting himself on purpose while he showed off or simply polished the blades.

I would comply, smiling and participating in this little game. It felt good for me as well to exhaust my magicka from time to time, especially during long weeks spent inside, with no other use for my abilities than that of humoring Hjolfr. Sometimes I would lick his digits wantonly as a foreplay of the actual healing process, hoping for more, but it wouldn't always work, and more often than I like to admit, we were both left needy and expectant, with the difference that I would later lay sleepless in my room while Hjolfr mounted some lass from the inn behind the thin walls that separated our chambers. I knew he liked the feel of my magic upon him, and I liked the tingling sensation of magicka flowing freely, almost to the point that I could sense it leaving my body, travelling the short distance that separated our hands, and cascading inside his cuts and scrapes, weaving new skin like a web of life where needed.

Things started going downfall from there, he would suddenly show up with large gaping wounds when I knew for a fact no weapon or blow suffered could have caused such an injury but his own hand, with his own daggers. Furthermore I knew those expanses of skin, I had studied in great detail the scars that lined his biceps and knew the new wounds ran exactly over old marks. By the end of this little, dangerous game we had going, his skin was flawless, not a sign left of battles long gone. As if the events linked to the scars had disappeared along with them, and my head throbbed if I tried to remember his stories, how he got them and by whose hand.

My mind strains to supply a replacement for those fleeting pieces of Hjolfr's life that will never come back, that I made vanish, that perhaps weren't even there in the first place.

The long wrinkled line on his shoulder was from a battle-axe, an halberd that almost sliced his arm off but was too dull to cut through, stopping at the bone. With a half chopped limb covered in the brightest of reds, Hjolfr had used not only the pain, but the rage surged from the attack, mostly, to get back at his opponent. It happened when he was barely out of the sewers, risking his life to steal from a rich merchant passing through the city. The personal guard of said man was massive, intimidating, and equipped with the most fearsome of weapons, but he was stupid enough to forget grinding its edge from time to time. With the help of the alchemist a few doors down from the hovel he inhabited, the wound was closed together, albeit approximately, leaving a fat, pale line, swirling angrily and shaking below the seam of his tunic, along the curve of his shoulder.

The hollow craters on his ankle, when the old hag threw coals at him back at the orphanage for staying up late at night, and sobbing meekly under a blanket that belonged for the most part more inside a rat's stomach than over that excuse of a bed he slept in. He didn't decide to fall asleep at the first lights of the morning of his own accord, but he was just so unbearably cold. As retaliation, the witch that was supposed to tend to the kids made burning embers fall over his ankles in his sleep the following night. As he grew, the angry red circles stretched along with his height, resembling Masser and Secunda, if seen from lying down on the grasslands, with your gaze sideways, and all around a plethora of distant moons, one for each Divine known or yet unaccounted for.

There was the cross that still oozed a strange dark yellow liquid, the cross that still scabbed from time to time at the back of his other shoulder, where a poisoned arrow had lodged itself for days before Hjolfr came to his senses and was able to remove it, having to slice his own flesh to slide the barbed arrowhead out. A damned toxicologist, or an alchemist with a passion for venoms rather than harmless draughts had attached him when he tried to clear a bandit's settlement. The bounty was interesting, enough to pay for bed and board for months, but the Jarl hadn't mentioned the high number of wanted individuals that had sided with the charismatic and ruthless killer that leaded them all. After slaughtering the best part of them and injuring mortally the rest, a dainty woman had stuck the arrow in his shoulder, before being decapitated with a single, whirling blow. The poison, however, was powerful enough that Hjolfr was left paralyzed for a day and a half, lying in a bed of skeever and human droppings before saving his own hide with a miraculous cut, worthy of the finest healer, and a long crawl back to the city.

But all of this had gotten lost with the rising interest he paid to my healing hands over his torso, the gentle caresses as I slid and tapped his chest rhythmically to entertain us both while the energy flowed like the sleekest of rivers downhill from me, to him. The way he moaned as the blood stopped dripping down his arm or leg, the soft grunts I elicited with my calculated pressure over his thigh, under his armpit, to feel the muscle, the staircase of ribs running down, now completely devoid of any trace of past combat. All of those things made me fall deeper inside the addictive spiral that our simple healing process had become. Tainted with lust, or with the threat that I could have left the house just moments before he turned up with a spluttering gap across his middle, forcing him to either make a mess of the whole city, wandering in search of an healer with bloodied clothes and hands, or remain at home, hoping in my swift return. Restoration should naturally have happened after the wound, as a way to cure whatever afflicted the victim. But what we had going on, in the secrecy of Hjolfr's house, was different. We both looked forward to the moment pure energy and life force could have aroused our minds and bodies, I wanted to see more blood, more wounds, because I knew what I was capable of, the control I had over that. And Hjolfr wanted the same, wanted to feel the dagger slide, and he smiled in anticipation of what would've come after.

I had the metaphorical knife by its handle, his wellbeing depended on my choices. How much accuracy to put behind a spell, how slow or fast I should have gone in stitching the skin together, whether to leave the newly formed tissue red and angry and swarming with the blood that followed freshly built veins, or pale, flat and buzzing with a peaceful hum of energy.

Then, as the dungeons dove deeper inside the bowels of Nirn, as the traps became more deathly with each passing room and as my stock of potions ran out, we had no way but to resort to that one spell that should have been forbidden from the beginning. I tried to balance the effects of Equilibrium, so that I wouldn't be left with too much magicka and not enough energy to raise a hand and cast the spells I needed to, but, as always, Hjolfr pushed my boundaries. And I allowed him to treat me so, I welcomed his challenges, one flesh wound after the other.

Until he demanded too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this chapter, or have questions/complaints/criticism/compliments, comments are welcome! Also the mentions of amnesia and mind alteration mentioned so far will play an important role for Gael and Hjolfr's story later on. I plan on either integrating the true story of their relationship in here, or writing a side story that is less focused on carnality and more on plot-building and problem-solving. Whichever the case, I really really want you to know what's going on between them, so it's highly likely that I'll write this mystery I have in my head into the fic.


	4. Balance - II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The game grows bolder and deadlier for Gael and Hjolfr both, but somehow they manage to gain precious knowledge of each other as the events unfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second half of the chapter on "Balance", once posted as a massive wall of text, but now split up to better pace the story and ease your reading.

I was paralyzed, unable to even raise a hand to cast a single spell. I don’t excel at Destruction magic but when we’re outnumbered the few tricks I know do come in handy to fend off the bulk of our opponents from Hjolfr, to leave him room to backstab a few of them. But not that time. I was frozen solid, not by ice, it had been the resident necromancer’s trap, just around the corner. I saw as blades of solid ice dug inside his muscle, ripping his skin, and leaving a wet, cold trail of enchanted water, that sizzled like acid in their wake. All I could do was try and heal Hjolfr, but the blows where too many, too fast, their succession left no room for recovery.

When the immobilizing grip melted from around my limbs where it had settled, probably because its caster was too busy attacking instead of maintaining the prison over me, I ran in front of Hjolfr, in a desperate attempt to shield him from more blows. A dagger sliced across the necromancer’s spine, revealing the slick and blood-wet whiteness of bone, but the hand holding the offending weapon was unsure, trembling, red and wavering. Hjolfr was bleeding profusely from all the gaps and nooks the ice had created as it perforated his body.

With what energy I had left I gathered all of my life essence, whose reserve was fortunately still intact since Hjolfr had received even my share of blows as I stood paralyzed in a corner, and I converted it into magicka, caring to leave behind only enough to survive for a few more minutes.

I’m not as good a mage as I like to believe when it comes to offensive spells, but I have studied, I have learnt every secret there was to learn about this incredible, crushing force. What I lack is aim, but that’s quickly solved if the spell chosen is meant for a large area. I engulfed us in lighting, a white hot, blistering heat jumping with glee from the ground into every body it encountered, crackling joyously, as if alive. The faint blue hum around the corners of the thunderbolts pulsed with energy with each kill, and soon the smell of burned flesh reached my nostrils, the sounds of desperate shrieking dull inside my throbbing head, despite their deafening volume. The raised corpses vanished into piles of ash, the necromancers shriveled into singed rags, the blood a dark, thick liquid oozing out of their noses and ears, brain and organs molten from the inside.

Then they came to me, the consequences of the most powerful Equilibrium I had ever casted in my life. My lungs couldn’t fill themselves with air anymore, all of my bones were on the brink of snapping, my organs felt like sacks of burlap stretching around a load of heavy stones, I could feel the tissue ripping apart inside of me, I couldn’t talk, I could not find the willpower to raise a finger, if only to try and heal one of us with what little magicka I had left. I had been foolish, one of us could’ve survived, ran as fast as he could, but I decided to stay behind instead. Save Hjolfr. And in so doing, I endangered the both of us.

He lay on the ground, clutching his daggers like a babe holding unto his mother’s fingers, rasping wetly through a mouthful of blood and bile. I was on my knees, bent over like a lifeless puppet, my face paling and going red then purple from the lack of oxygen, a steady rivulet of snot dripped from my nose down to his tattered leathers. I had no energy to heal either one of us, we would’ve died.

Hjolfr found it in himself to raise a hand, rummage in my pack and find a healing potion. In that moment I was just glad he managed as much, but then he offered me the bottle, rolling over like a beaten stray dog and putting the rim against my lips. I guzzled down what I could and immediately I felt the flesh relaxing and tensing in the right places, the bones invigorated and my lungs filling like waterskins downstream with air. It felt liberating but it was only the beginning.

Hjolfr was slipping away. I came to my senses as the bottle shattered on the ground, and then I looked for more potions. I gave him a health concoction but he spluttered it all over my robes, the quantity he had managed to drink not even remotely enough to keep him alive. We had no more potions. Damned treasures, taking up all the damned space and leaving us with not nearly enough supplies to save ourselves. I panicked, once again, as I always do, and started turning the place upside down, fondling corpses in search for something, anything. I was unsteady as I crawled around but I finally found a stash of bottles.

It was a curse, I realized grimly, that we would’ve both died there. The next attempt was in vain as well, there was no way the potion would’ve reached whatever anatomic part it was in charge of healing with all the blood and other fluids already flooding Hjolfr’s airways and lungs and stomach from the inside.

A last resort, as always. I drank the potions with a fevered speed, and suddenly I was alive again, I could breathe without strain, I could rise on my feet. But then I realized I was meant to do something else. Another burst of magic and my bones crumbled again, my liver gave out, my heartbeat slowed to an imperceptible ticking noise in my head. With what magicka the Equilibrium had granted me I healed Hjolfr, until the blood was magically absorbed and the holes caused by the iced spears started to knit back and close.

Now, all we had to do was lay down, wait for my magicka to come back to me, and slowly heal, little by little, our broken bodies. I tried taking deep, albeit measured and labored breaths, praying all of the Divines for a swift recovery of my magical energy. But the prayers didn’t last long, Hjolfr was already back on his feet, stumbling, and then, bent over me, he forced more health potions down my throat. I almost choked on the clear red liquid, but managed to drink enough of it. He kept that up, emptying bottle after bottle from the necromancer’s secret stash inside my mouth and throwing the glass containers to break into pieces against the wall.

“Heal.” He moaned, dropping to the ground, holding his side, probably as an attempt to stop internal bleeding from some leftover wound.

What choice did I have? My body was full of life again, I saw no reason to stay there, lying down, when only moments earlier I thought it to be all I could’ve asked for, I wanted to jump and run. But I was so disoriented by the fill of life after such a drastic drop to a state of near death that I didn’t find it in me to challenge his request. His request for a restorative spell rang normal to my ears. If anything, I felt compelled to do as much, never mind the fact that now, the bulk of his external wounds already healed, he could’ve been capable of healing himself by drinking the potions directly. I didn’t consider that for a second.

At the height of my blissed-out condition, the thought of giving it all up through yet another Equilibrium was dreadful and terrible. But as I said, I was in no position to question what he asked of me.

Another burst of energy and again I felt life leave my body, replaced by a glowing, flowing blue force that was powerful, yes, but did nothing to soothe the never ending pain that gripped at me from the inside.

I exhausted once again all of my magicka, enveloping Hjolfr in a white, warm glow of restorative energy. I was completely drained, with only a little life left in me, barely enough to raise a hand and drink some of the health concoction that remained for myself, and then resume my rest, awaiting for my magical energies to come back to me on their own.

But Hjolfr had to push me, more and more and more. It was a dangerous swing of loss and gain of health and magicka flowing inside of me already, my brain was sizzling, it wouldn’t have been long before I ended up like those caught in my chain lightning.

Another shiny red bottle touched my lips and I whined like an animal, trying to push him away.

“Heal me, hadn’t it been for me you’d be dead or worse now. I saved you.” He forces the glass past my teeth, I manage to crawl backwards, away from the intrusion.

“So did I.” I whisper with a breath of air.

“That’s your job. Why do you think I carry your sorry arse around for?” Caught in disdain and hurt beyond what words can express, I can’t find it in myself to talk back at him, I just gape at what he said, at the harsh reality I can’t bring myself to look in the eye with each passing day I spend with him. He takes advantage of my shock to pour the potion down my throat.

“Heal.” He growls, with a cold, serious tone.

“No. We’re both well enough to leave now, let’s forget any of this happened.” A stung spreads over my cheek where his hand collided with my skin. I’m not surprised. He grabs my hair and without the slightest hint of gentleness – as if there might be any at all behind such a gesture – he hauls me to my feet.

He bares his teeth, and when my tired brain catches up I realize he’s smiling.

And then with a moan he draws his dagger and cuts across his middle, slicing his torn leathers even more, digging deep enough to cut through his intestines. It’s half a wheeze, half a laugh, but he drops on the ground and blood flows like the tears on the face of a mother who just received news of her son’s death on the battlefield. And it’s then that I know I have no choice. He’s awfully right, this is what I’m here for, this is why any of this has happened all along.

I drop and press on his wound, the flow of energy caused by the Equilibrium and the consequent release of restorative spells, one after the other has become so natural to me I don’t even notice my body giving out under the loss of health and each vein filling with blue, flickering magicka anymore.

I give it my all, even though I know the one he forced down on me was the last bottle, that if I don’t stop on time I could very well die before he manages to haul me up and get me out of here, if that’s his intention at all.

He cajoles me, or perhaps he just voices the pleasure one feels when magic stitches wounds closed, with a string of sweet words and encouragements to continue patching him up that sound like a tender lullaby in my ears. It’s the last thing I hear, then. My head is pounding with a thousand war drums, the blood pooling in my skull, around my temples, in my flushed face. He’s as good as knew, better than ever. Not a mark on his skin, I’ve taken care of those before this unfortunate trap laid to us by a group of wanted and dangerous necromancers, not a scar, just dried black blood lining his jaw, tinging his clothes.

I briefly wonder if he’s a mage as well, amid the scorn, when he conjures another health potion out of nowhere, I can’t explain where it came from, when did he get a hold of it, and perhaps it’s best if I remain oblivious of this last bottle’s whereabouts. Gentle, now, he makes me drink it, and I feel its strength, cursing through every fiber of my being until I’m whole again. And my magicka comes back to me faster now that I’m not in mortal danger anymore.

But I don’t want to get up from where I lie, still lifeless, unwilling, half on his lap, half on the soiled stone floor.


	5. Primal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The consequences of the actions of the past days develop until the breaking point. And after that, the vicious circle starts again, like a serpent, biting its tail and poisoning its own flesh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this story the notion of "consensual" is blurred at best, especially if we keep in mind that Gael is plagued by amnesia, suffers from migraines that affect his mind, and seems to have very powerful feelings of guilt and shame over his desires. Hjolfr is an enabler in this scenario, and likely comes off as abusive and controlling at best of times (but not always). So if that sort of dynamic is a problem for you, I advise you stop reading or brace yourself to see more of that.

When we finally go back home we’re both all in one piece, no open wounds to speak of, stamina and vigor restored. My magicka crackles again under my fingertips, eager to be let out and used, but my mind hasn’t caught up with the newfound energy of my body and perhaps of my spirit.

He doesn’t speak, leaves me with few instructions to Lydia, and shuts the door behind himself. I’m mostly bedridden, every move I manage feels as if it might drain me of all I’ve got. The seesaw of health potions, Equilibrium and Healing on Hjolfr has taken its toll, it’s like I can’t trust my own body anymore. If I start believing in earnest I am safe and sane again, then the paranoia takes over, and I begin thinking that it’s only a matter of minutes before I’ll need to sacrifice all of myself for him, to give myself up to whatever Daedra has claimed my soul with our ceaseless dabbling with arcane forces, only to make sure Hjolfr lives to see another dawn over Whiterun’s rooftops.

After the first week, alone eating soup and indulging Lydia when she carves a lopsided mudcrab out of a slice of apple every once in a while, I start trusting myself again. There’s no point in laying around anyway. I stand by the alchemy table for the better part of the day, calling out each ingredient’s properties by heart, until my eyes catch up with the lack of sunlight. I spend sleepless nights contemplating a run for my life, hoping to choose the opposite direction from what undisclosed location Hjolfr has set out for nearly ten days ago.

At the second week of self-inflicted house arrest’s mark, Hjolfr is back. I stand in the doorway and see him with a pack full of furs to skin and pelts to clean, he passes me over the threshold and leads me to the back room. I unwittingly follow behind, like a second nature.

He drops his load on the floor, crosses me to lock the door and rummages among the furs and bloodied rags and daggers to look for something. The glimmer of the sleek blade makes my stomach churn, but I can quickly suppress the painful memories. It helps to see his hand rise from inside the pack, holding two vials full of troll fat, because then my mind makes all the missing connections, every burst link regenerates, and it doesn’t matter the pain, the humiliation, the wrongness of our deeds and everything I’m subjected to when I’m with Hjolfr because it’s suddenly clear. I seek this chase on the thin ice that separates life and death, because I know that the ultimate goal at the end of the dark cave we have to dig our way through is pleasure.

Pure, simple, wild, primitive pleasure. And it might be shameful for me, but at the sight of the dense substance my mouth waters, my legs tremble, my knees give out jointly under my weight just at the right time, after I’ve turned around and braced myself under the now rickety table where my spare spell tomes are discarded. I hear the pop of the cork, the rustling of cloth and I feel the slide of my robes over my backside, until I’m exposed, pliant and ready, as I always am and always will be.

Hjolfr might gut himself to get what he wants, might slap or punch me to convince me when I’m unsure of his authority, but perhaps, even as I bend over and take all he gives me with a gratitude I didn’t show anybody else, not even for bigger favors than this kindness Hjolfr claims he’s doing in keeping me with him, I have the upper hand.

He’s alive simply because I refuse to have him die on my watch, under my vigil, guardian eye. I would never let anybody kill him, and when the day will come for someone to take him and bring him to his own grave, to open the doors of Sovngarde for him and show him his way in, I better be around or I swear on Mara’s everlasting compassionate love that I’ll seek the bastard and rip his innards out until I’m sated.

He spares no affection, no gentleness in preparing me, apart from a couple of slicked fingers that stretch me roughly before he breaches me roughly. It’s been so long since we’ve last had at it, and the more I feel the burn, the more I long for it. Before I know it I’m shivering and I feel feverish, but the thickness of Troll Fat is spreading inside me with each movement of his digits and it’s so much better than the usual salves and tallow I use for lubrication. The thick, slimy substance has odd properties and while it’s not numbing in the least, it enhances every drag, every punishing press inside, sending me into a fevered frenzy. And despite the pain, his tight embrace around my middle, his huffed beastly grunts, I crave for more and more.

“So fucking tight. I gather you’ve missed me. All alone here, with no one to fill you up like you deserve. I’m here now, you need not worry.”

I try to remain silent, but he punches moans and gasps out of me with every powerful thrust. He sends my neglected cock forward against the wooden surface that sustains us, and I’m sore, chafing and on the brink of tears with the intensity of this, after so long.

He paints my insides with scorching spend and I twitch at the rumbling sounds of his climax, joining him in an heartbeat.

We’re painting, sweating as we’re still clothed. My unshed tears finally fall against my hands, white-knuckled with an unrelenting grip where I’m bracing myself, still.

“I should’ve run after last time.” I whisper softly.

“You didn’t.” There’s no hint of smugness, it’s not necessary.

“I could’ve.”

“Then why’d you stay?” And I hear genuine interest, it’s not a challenge to see what answer I come up with. He honestly wants to know why I stick with a brutish rogue despite the way he treats me.

Thousands of answers swarm inside my head, brushing against those nooks that make my forehead burn and throb.

“I… I don’t know.”

“But you do, don’t you?”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

Strangely enough, he kisses the sweat-slicked nape of my neck, lowers my robes, gently and almost lovingly and turns me around. I feel conflicting emotions, my chest constricted as if in a vice.

I hide my face along the dark hair of his bear, nuzzling the skin of his cheek. Meekly and afraid of my own sentiments.

“Let’s forget what happened, at least for now. We can go back to normal.”

I scoff, at his half-arsed promise that the display of sadism won’t be repeated, at the conception of “normality” he seems to be advocating now, while his cooling come slides down my bruised thighs.

“And what would that be?” I reply in jest. But his answer makes me shiver, makes me long for something I fear, makes my mind twist and scream but not entirely in pain.

“It’s been so long since I tasted you. I miss it, I won’t lie. I know you want this too. Whenever you feel like it, come to my room with a dagger. Well sharpened. I’ll taste your blood, your flesh, all of you. We can do that, like old times.”


End file.
